


The Game Changes

by TeddyRadiator



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:08:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24237043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeddyRadiator/pseuds/TeddyRadiator
Summary: The last chess game...written for Droxy's birthday, 2015
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	The Game Changes

* * *

The last time Harry Potter saw Severus Snape alive they were locked in mortal combat, and he was winning. The older wizard was stronger, more ruthless and less reckless, but Harry had the advantage of youth on his side. Each gave as good as they got, and both were tiring, but Harry could smell victory, and it made him careless.

Then, he looked up and met Hermione’s eyes, and saw the grief in them. It was all an opportunist like Snape needed. With a daring move that would have made Ron proud, he checkmated Harry’s king in four easy moves.

* * *

Hermione smiled indulgently at her husband, and discreetly passed him his teacup. Harry knew the brew contained a powerful analgesic potion, and his heart ached to see the older wizard in such pain.

“Well done, Mr. Potter,” Snape said, easing back against his pillows. His voice, which Harry heard in his dreams, was still imposing, but it had weakened. Overtones that had once rang through the Great Hall crackled past his vocal chords unstruck, like water syphoned through a colander. His raven’s wing black hair was completely white now, and reached down to his waist in a glorious, snowy waterfall.

* * *

But his large, slender hands, calloused and scarred, peppered with liver spots, were as steady as they’d been when he became England’s youngest Potions Master. Harry fancied Snape even looked like Albus now, but that was a trick of time and his own imagination.

Dumbledore had been light and sunshade, power hidden behind voluminous, frivolous robes; twinkling blue eyes that hid utter ruthlessness and concealed his schemes. He had been poison sweetened with treacle, the glittering lights that capture sunshine on the ripples of a river that looks slow and sluggish, but is actually fast-moving, deadly, and full of obstacles.

* * *

Snape was the shadow made by moonlight; he was wily and hid his power behind bitter facade and raw, Northern energy. He was the gleam of a shining flake you thought was mica at the bottom of a clear stream, but turned out to be true gold.

He was silver hidden in a bubble of lava, nectar housed in a blister. He wore black to conceal his goodness, and spat vitriol to hide a heart Harry once believed to be merely the organ that pumped blood around his body. Or so cold and blackened it contained only one agenda: revenge.

* * *

“One of these days I’m not going to let you psyche me out, Snape,” Harry boasted.

Snape raised one expressive brow toward his opponent. “With all due respect, Mr. Potter, I believe you would need many more days than I have remaining to me to beat me at Wizard’s chess.”

“You’re just saying that so I won’t try harder. You’ve always used reverse psychology on me,” Harry insisted petulantly. He glanced up at Hermione, but she looked away. That’s when Harry knew: Severus wasn’t lying. He knew they would never have another chance to wage war upon one another again.

* * *

It was written in Hermione’s red-rimmed eyes as well. If losing what little of Snape he was given hurt this bad, how awful must be for her?

Snape reached for Hermione’s hand, and brought it to his lips in a gentle kiss. “I wonder, dear wife, if you would grant me a moment alone with boy Potter?”

Hermione glanced in Harry’s direction, and for a moment he wasn’t all that sure she would trust Harry alone with her wizard. Then she rose from the bed, placed a tender kiss of absolute love and devotion on her husband’s forehead, and left.

* * *

The door closed behind her silently.

For a moment, Snape didn’t speak. He lay with his eyes closed, and seemed to drift off. His chest rose and fell; but for that, he could have been a statue.

“I suppose you realise by now that this will in all likelihood be our last meeting, Potter.”

The words startled Harry, and he leaned in close. “I don’t think─”

“No, I suppose you don’t,” Snape replied, but there was no malice in his words. If anything, he sounded pitying. “I don’t have any deathbed confession to make, or other memories to give you.”

* * *

He opened his large, liquid black eyes, and Harry felt that incredible pull, as if, perhaps, in another world─

“Oh, stop it, Potter,” Snape said irascibly, rolling his eyes. “Don’t go all sap and pudding on me, boy. I’m tired and I don’t have time for your mind to wander to places it doesn’t need to go.”

Screwing up his courage, Harry blurted, “But if things were different─”

“But they _aren’t_ , don’t you see, boy?” he asked, his voice tinged with mild exasperation. “I loved your mother for all the right reasons, and lost her for all the wrong ones.

* * *

“When Hermione came into my life, I swore I wouldn’t mistake wanting for needing ever again. I made the right choice, and it brought me happiness beyond anything I ever hoped to deserve.” The tired serenity in his voice frightened Harry. Snape, so full of angry impatience for most of his life, sounded as if he had all the time in the world.

He looked at Harry intently, and to Harry’s shock, tears fell down the sunken cheeks. “I want you to look after her. Promise me you’ll see that she gets out, and wears pretty things, and doesn’t mourn.

* * *

“Promise me that you’ll see that she laughs, and enjoys life, and doesn’t sit around this house moping.” He smiled, wryly. “Tell her I will expect better of her than that.”

It sounded like the punchline to an old joke between lifelong companions, but Harry couldn’t make himself ask about it. It seemed too personal, and he knew he played no part in it. Impulsively, placed his hand over Snape’s. It was feverishly warm. Harry suppressed the impulse to snatch his hand away, but he couldn’t deny the bigger impulse to take that weathered hand in his and kiss it.

* * *

Instead, he stayed still, and nodded. “I promise, Severus. I’ll make sure she wears pretty things, and gets out of the house and enjoys life.”

Severus nodded, and lay back. For several moments, his throat worked as he fought his emotions. “Tell her I’m glad she’ll miss me. That I’m glad I didn’t bollocks this up.” His face creased in sorrow. “Tell her I’ll miss her until she’s with me again.”

“Maybe you should tell her.”

“I have,” he answered simply. “But I wanted her to hear it from you. Then she will know you and I parted as friends.”

* * *

“So that’s what we are, in the end?”

“I like to think so,” replied Snape. “Once you outgrew your childish infatuation with me.”

Harry laughed. “Who says I outgrew it? Maybe I just learned to love you on _your_ terms.”

Harry thought it might be one of the few times in their relationship he had been able to surprise the older wizard. Finally he answered, “It was the right terms. For you as well as Hermione and me. And regardless of the terms, I do count you as my friend, Harry Potter.”

Harry nodded, and wiped away his own tears.

* * *

“I wish the ones we loved didn’t have to die,” Harry said, numbly. “I’m so sick of having to say goodbye to the people who mean the most to me.”

To his surprise, Severus chuckled. “If we didn’t go away, you’d never have the chance to miss us.” He wiped the last of the tears from his face. “You’ll appreciate us more when you see us again.”

He lay back on his pillow, closed his eyes and crossed his hands over his chest; an unintentional parody of the death pose. Or, Harry thought, knowing Snape, it was very much intentional.

* * *

The funeral would have been a circus but for the combined efforts of Harry and Hermione. They would not tolerate Wizarding Britain weeping, wailing and gnashing teeth for Snape now. He had never wanted _that_ kind of notoriety. Hermione was exhausted from the grinding formalities that followed any death; perhaps now that it was over, she could get some rest.

Standing by her side, Harry was shocked at how Hermione had aged, until he remembered the sagging man with the thinning hair tiredly staring back at him from his shaving mirror that morning.

When had they all got so old?

* * *

Standing by the crypt, Harry looked at the still figure, draped in dark cloth. There was something about Snape which had always provoked his most intense emotions.

Harry supposed he was just the kind of wizard who would always attract the darker hues of any emotional spectrum, reserving his brightest colours for those he truly loved. Like Hermione.

There was certainly nothing half-measure in any feeling Harry had ever had for the wizard. Righteous anger, blazing hatred, remorse, confusion, jealousy, desire, kinship. All the microcosm of his life, played out on the stage of his relationship with this one man.

* * *

Hermione stepped forward, and raised her wand to the sky. As one, the mourners did the same, this final honour to the wizard they all owed so much. Harry closed his eyes, remembering Snape as he was the first time he ever saw him. What he would give for the chance to look into those flashing eyes again…

The body was lowered into the stone vault. Hermione turned away, unable to watch the darkness cover her husband for all time. Harry put his arm around her, and they held one another, before heading out into a world without Severus Snape.


End file.
